These days, I mostly read Charles Stross' blog for the guest bloggers and their posts. This is one of those posts.
"The Future is not American"
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-st ... the-f.html
It hits on a serious pet peeve of mine in SF as a genre, namely that a lot of stuff I've read looks a lot like 20th century Earth politics IN SPAAAAAAAACE! Which is kind of funny when you consider that, 500 years ago today, the major political actors in Europe were wearing codpieces and kneeling before monarchs. But the repercussions of this lack of imagination are bigger than one might think, and... well, Judith Tarr puts it better than I can.
Anyway, please give it a read and tell me what you think.